Ha! I thought I was the only one with a desire to learn every language on the planet. I live in Colorado and have visited the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona, so my lifelong dream is to someday learn Navajo. (For those of you who are not obscure-language fanatics, Navajo is a language so difficult to learn that they used it as a code in WWII.)
Zach -- have you read They Have a Word For It? It's one of my favorite examples of why I love learning foreign languages. It's a list of interesting words that don't have an equivalent in English.
The French have a word (esprit d'escalier) for "The witty insult that comes to you just AFTER it's too late to deliver it."
The German have a word (fisselig) (I don't think I spelled that right) for "flustered to the point of total incompetance due to people watching you, especially a superior."
And I don't remember which language it is that has a word (Orenda) for intention-manifestation. He describes it as somewhere between a goal and a spell -- a focused concentration of will that causes a thing to come to pass. Sounds like IM to me!
Nice to meet a fellow expert in gibberish.
Amanda  |